The archived blog of the Project On Government Oversight (POGO).

May 18, 2012

Key NDAA Reforms: Nuclear Weapons Complex Edition

Photo from the movie Dr. Strangelove

By MIA STEINLE AND DANA LIEBELSON

This week, the House rejected key amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would have prevented rollbacks of oversight at our nation's nuclear weapons labs and would have maintained zero funding for an unnecessary $6 billion plutonium facility. These excellent amendments were rejected by GOP leadership and not brought to the House floor for the vote.

But it's not too late. There's hope that comparable measures will make it into the Senate version of the bill. It's time for Congress to realize that the Cold War is over.

Reps. George Miller (D-CA), Peter Visclosky (D-IN), and Loretta Sanchez (D-CA) proposed an amendment that would have ensured that NNSA nuclear weapons labs aren’t given a free pass. The amendment took aim at sections of the NDAA that give the labs the ability to self-regulate and to lower health and safety standards. It also would have struck a section that strips the Department of Energy’s advisory body, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, of its independence. Simply put, the amendment would have prevented dangerous rollbacks of oversight of nuclear weapons and serious repercussions for public health and safety.

Time to Zero Out Funding for Nuclear Boondoggle

POGO asked the House of Representatives to support a proposed amendment to the NDAA by Reps. Ed Markey (D-MA), Loretta Sanchez (D-CA) and Hank Johnson (D-GA) to restore cuts to the federal government’s $6 billion boondoggle, the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Nuclear Facility (CMRR-NF).But we’re definitely not the only ones who want to end funding for CMRR-NF. There has been a flood of testimony and articles from experts who think it’s time to zero out funding for this proposed money pit once and for all.

"If the DoD believed it essential to spend $6 billion on the CMRR-NF, it would have already allocated money for the project. In fact, the DoD, since 2011, has been transferring money to NNSA for projects it deemed essential. It is clear that the Pentagon, in conjunction with NNSA, had already decided that it could not afford to build the CMRR and adequately fund or manage other high priority nuclear modernization activities, as well," Roth and Brian wrote.

So Rep. Turner and GOP leadership that blocked consideration of the Markey-Sanchez-Johnson Amendment are essentially going rogue in order to save a facility that POGO and countless other experts have called a “project without a cause,” whose estimated price tag has climbed from $375 million to $3.7 to $5.9 billion.

According to Stephen Young, senior analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, “There is no need for the United States to increase pit production…and even if there [is], the existing plutonium facility at Los Alamos could expand production without building the replacement nuclear facility.”

William Hartung, Director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy, said that Rep. Turner’s nuclear proposals “would take us back to the worst days of the Cold War, when political posturing and inflated fears drove a dangerous, costly, and counterproductive arms race.”

So don’t just take it from us: the House missed a big opportunity to save taxpayer dollars on CMRR-NF. Let’s hope the Senate doesn’t make the same mistake.

These so-called enhancements to NDAA are evil. NDAA will destroy the United States of America, as well as the U. S. Constution. You will turn America into the frightful world of 1984, or of the Soviet Union. America will no longer America.

We need nuclear and chemical laboratory oversight. How do you think that the nuclear disaster at Fukushima, Japan, happened? The United States should be of the people, by the people, and for the people---NOT of the corporations and military industrial complex, by the corporations and military industrial complex, and for the corporations and military industrial complex. We do not want to go back to the days of the Cold War, only relive them in the Soviet Union---even though we are Americans.